12 June 2006

Incest Fiasco Continues To Amuse

The ridiculous incest-defence arguments keep rollin' in. A new contributor known just as plain ol' Dave) piped up the following:

"FYI, in India it is a common practice for a man to marry a first cousin on the mother's side (daughter of his uncle). This is not considered incest. (Incidentally, Prince Albert was Queen Victoria's first cousin). However, genetic diversity has been well maintained in India by the restriction of marriage within the same gotra (if you know what that means)."

First Prince Charles, now Prince Albert and Queen Victoria? Not forgetting Adam and Eve? I questioned Dave's knowledge (athough I already knew where he got his information), to which he condescendingly responded:

It pains me to have to respond to this 'exposed' person. (I will take a shower immediately after completing this post.)

The relevant statement (if he has difficulty reading such serious stuff) is : "there is a long tradition of uncle-niece marriage and unions between a man and his maternal uncle's daughter (mother's brother's daughter) in South India."

The main problem with this is that I had already read the exact same text on a Wikipedia page and I completely disagreed with it. First of all, this "Dave" clearly gets all of his information from the Internet and has probably never even been to India, much less enjoy a working knowledge of family dynamics in Indian society. He mentions 'gotra' (clan) but he doesn't understand that marrying within the same gotra is not quite the same as marrying your own blood relative. For example, I am of Sindhi ethnicity and it is quite likely that I will marry a Sindhi female. This doesn't mean that my future wife will be my blood relative.

However, I more or less agree with the idea that marrying within families is common practice... among out-of-the-way backward communities and tribals, not civilised society. Should this argument be employed, the unwitting ramification would be complete agreement that Sai Baba belongs to a backward community in an out-of-the-way hamlet (Puttaparthi) which is a fact recorded in all of the official biographies!

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot, this argument is as good as any to show the facts about Sai Baba and his sordid incestuous origins. The rib-tickling hilarity of the defences never fails to split my sides. I say to them: Keep It Up! :-)

Meesaragadda is the surname of that family. The Telugu-speakers put their surnames first and the personal name next, unlike Europeans. As for Raju, it is the caste-name. Telugu people don't have middle names. Their order of naming is surname-personal name-caste name. That's all.

Hi Telugu, yes I have found this out. As a matter of fact, this is even more of an indication that Sathya Sai Baba (and his family) have not been telling the truth about even their names.

You see, nobody in all these years knew about the 'Meersaraganda' name until the publication of a book in year 2000, that turned up lots of interesting information. As far as anybody was concerned, Sathya Sai Baba's civil name was 'Sathyanarayana Raju'. Now we know that 'Raju' is simply the name of his caste as it is listed as such in his school records. So this is yet another indication of suspicious things kept under the covers.

About This Blog

About Me

I was a hardcore follower of Sathya Sai Baba for just over a decade, and made six trips to see him in India. Now no longer a devotee, I use this blog to record memories, comments and muses on the Sai scenario and also point out inaccuracies in Sai Baba's philosophical and theological presentation. Why did I leave Sai Baba?